Solstice
by Forever Jake
Summary: A short chapter about an undead elf who is a slave to a dreadlord.


            Archen scuttled among the rocks, dodging the crashing waves nimbly. The pale sun glowed distantly on the horizon. It always glowed distantly nowadays; it was if the summer spirit had seeped out of the very skies of this world, opening the way for a merciless winter.

            Winter. A word the elf knew well.

            He leapt from rook to rook as the frigid water splashed noisily around him. There was a place he was seeking, a hollow cave at the water's edge, hidden beneath the foot of a small cliff in the rock. His feet made no sound as the touched lightly off each slippery stone. Others would have been daunted by the violence of the roaring surf, the danger of being swept away, and the sheer cold wrath with which Nature insisted on expressing herself.

            Archen knew she did not pity him enough to grant such a boon.

            Winter, a word he never heard in Silvermoon, though it played now on his mind like some cacophonous tune, a cold melody that would neither escalate nor subside. True, the forests outside the city that had once been his home had often been covered in snow, sometimes for centuries on end. But those cheerful frosts had not been a true winter. Winter, he knew now, did not tickle your nose or make your ears shiver. It stabbed your heart. It cleft your soul.

            He spotted the cave in the distance, its mouth yawning like some great demon in anticipation of the moment when it would devour him. The moment came, but it felt to him as though it was he who had devoured the cave, and not the opposite, for as he entered, he seemed to warm slightly. This was of course impossible, for after all these years, who could think he would ever thaw from such a winter? Yet his soul melted, at least for a moment, as he stepped silently into the tiny hollow. Here the cold sea winds did not enter, and for the tiniest of fractional seconds, Archen did not feel the winter's icy touch in his bones.

            "You are late," a voice split through the dark. The sound reached the elf's ears, and he was cold again. There was a shifting movement in the shadows, and a figure began to emerge. It had a torso that small for a human's, but it was supported by two long, hooked legs which ended in cruel, taloned feet. These brought the demon – for that was what he was – forward a few steps, into the dim light that seeped in from the cave's mouth. His wings, dark and leathery, unfolded behind him, rustling softly. He calculated his movements methodically, almost theatrically, choosing a specific spot on the cave floor to stop so that he would be half way revealed by the filtered light and halfway obscured by the walls of blackness. None of this mattered, of course, for Archen's elven night vision revealed the demon's diminutive easily, and there was no one else present. The demon's strutting was hardly diminished due to the lack of a suitable audience, however.

            "You have brought the artifact?" the great voice boomed. It was a statement more than a question, and so the elf did not answer, instead pulling back a corner of his coyote-hide cloak to reveal the hilt of a massive, black broadsword. It seemed to glow eerily in the scant light of the cave, and Archen suddenly came under the distinct impression that any sane person should have run, wailing, from the premises after having gazed at it for more than a moment.

            This fact, as well, was evidently not pertinent to the demon, for his lips parted cruelly to release a toothy sneer rather than petrified scream which seemed appropriate.

            The demon's name was Belian, though there were few in this world who had ever spoken it. He was a dreadlord, a particularly merciless brand of hell-spawn, and all who looked upon his grinning visage promptly looked away with the conviction that the moderately sized monster was about to devour them whole.

            He spoke, and Archen felt as though he should shiver.

            "Good. Bring it here." The elf obliged, drawing out the dark blade completely from his cloak and sauntering sheepishly forward to where the dreadlord stood. The blade seemed to melt into his hand as he crossed the cave floor, becoming a part of him, assimilating into his system of organs and arteries, fusing imperceptibly into his flesh. He reached the place where the demon stood, and he could not remember why he had walked there, why he had bothered. He blinked at Belian, surprised to note that the he dwarfed the demon by a full head. How had he never noticed that before? Perhaps he had only forgotten.

            "Well?" Belian boomed. "Stop staring at me and give it here." Archen looked down at the sword which extended from his hand. That? Why would he give that to the dreadlord? Why, it was a part of him. It always had been. The demon did not ask for his hand, or his leg. Why this sword?

            Swiftly and suddenly, the blade was no longer in his grasp. Belian hefted it in his own hand, examining a line of glowing letters which streamed down its length. Archen blinked, and tried to remember what had just happened. What had he been doing? It had something to do with the sword, something to do with keeping it from his master… yet that was impossible. Belian was the reason he had stolen it in the first place, wasn't it? To bring it back here, because the dreadlord desired it?

            "Very good, elf," the demon was saying. "A magnificent find. This will make locating the others so much easier."

            "The… the others?"

            But the demon did not answer, for he was once again entranced with the runes inscribed on the blade.

            "Has it a name?" Archen asked suddenly, and he did not know why he did. It seemed, somehow, that knowing the sword's name was dreadfully important.

            "Aye," Belian said, without replacing his gaze from the shimmering letters. He did not stop to wonder why the elf should want to know, or why he should want to tell him. "Aye," he said, "it has a name. It is called Spectrescythe."

            _Spectrescythe_. Archen repeated the name to himself. A wind whistled quietly through some unseen opening in the ceiling of the cave, and behind him, the elf could feel the winter cold seeping in through the chamber's entrance.

            "Gather your things," Belian said, gesturing to various packs and tomes which lay scattered about the cave floor, forgotten. Archen recalled at once how he had long used this cave for his home, how his belongings had come to be scattered about it. He had quite forgotten it since he had entered the chamber with the magnificent sword. He bent and began shoving books and parchments into a nearby haversack.

            He spared a glance back up at the demon. Belian's eyes were shut, the sword grasped firmly in his talons. As he gazed at it, Archen could feel, growing in himself, an inexplicable, unnatural want for the blade. Shaking himself as if from a daydream, he forced his gaze back to his work, and asked, "Where are we going?"

            Belian spoke one word, and though Archen was no longer watching him, he knew that the dreadlord had not opened his eyes to say it.

            "Northshire."


End file.
